Robin Eley

Robin was a finalist in the 2012 Archibald Prize, Highly Commended in the Doug Moran Portrait Prize in 2010 and 2011, and a finalist in the Eutick Memorial Still Life Prize in 2010.

In 2010 Eley transitioned from a highly successful career as a professional illustrator to that of studio artist. He has recently included in a group exhibition at the Westmont Ridley- Tree Museum of Art in Santa Barbara, USA.

In an opposite methodology to that of Chuck Close, where tiny moments of abstraction coalesce into a cohesive and identifiable realist whole, Eley’s paintings start as a realist whole, factual in every detail, but are then rearranged in favor of abstraction, sacrifice, and loss. Each singular painting (oil on Dibond mounted on aluminum honeycomb panel) begins as two images side-by- side. This whole is broken down into 1 x 1 inch fragments, cut precisely with a CNC router to allow for a rearranging of the pictorial information. As the fragments are swapped between the images, an informational glitch is implied.

As digital information passes through various channels of density, dispersion, and re-assembly for upload and download, it takes the format of a net or web. There are concentrated nodes of information and tiny streams of information passing between them, but the web is identifiable collectively as a unit. The issue with this unit is its bulk, and the velocity of this bulk must be managed through compression. And through compression, we have loss, retaining only what is essential for any given task.

Eley’s paintings then go through the same scrutiny that has become entirely and inescapably ingrained in our everyday life. At what cost does this come? In our day and age, as much or more effort is directed toward engineering and designing our digital presence than our physical presence, which seems to be losing its wholeness in the same way a tiff is compressed into a jpeg, or a lossless audio file is delivered as an mp3. In this way Eley’s paintings are representative of the consequences of these digital phenomena on our physical existence.

Professional Appointments
2012
Director, The Art Academy, South Australia
Mentor, Jump Mentoring Program, Australia Council for the Arts
Lecturer part-time, Visual Communications, University of South Australia

Robin Eley

On this weird cultural fence / I should stick with synthetic colours

Oil on dibond, epoxy and aluminium honeycomb panel

76 x 60 cm

2016

$14,500

Robin Eley

Everything comes before / A problem in mind

Oil on dibond, epoxy and aluminium honeycomb panel

76 x 60 cm

2016

$14,500

Robin Eley

It's paradise on one hand / Sort of weirdly postmodern

Oil on dibond, epoxy and aluminium honeycomb panel

76 x 60 cm

2016

$14,500

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